Decision-making and innovation are moving at a new speed amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and that may become the new normal, said Omar Lateef, DO, CEO of Chicago-based Rush University Medical Center, in a contributed article published by Forbes.
Dr. Lateef told contributors David Benjamin and David Komlos the pandemic created a challenge in terms of getting a quick uniform consensus around an issue before making changes.
"To respond to COVID-19 and ensure safety in the organization, we didn't have the time to build uniform consensus," he said. "We have done things few places have done before — built a forward triage area creating a safe COVID-19 diagnostic physical area, built a new ICU where there wasn't one, increased capacity across the general floors — effectively making changes in three weeks that we would normally do over two or three years."
But he said moving at that quick pace "left holes and opportunities for improvement after changes — it was important not to be defensive and willing to evolve every day and listen to people to make things better."
Dr. Lateef added that transparency and educating people about the reasoning behind a change is important, but "you don't have to be perfect."
"We will use these learnings to change how leadership works and to be far more efficient going forward," he said.
Read Dr. Lateef's full interview here.